TALLAHASSEE — Cable and cellphone bills could be trimmed, the cost of textbooks cut and testing in public schools reduced. Water and land policy may be overhauled, medical marijuana legalized and beer and liquor laws loosened.

Orange County leaders are pushing to close what they call a troubling loophole in Florida law that allows people arrested on domestic-violence charges to harass and threaten their alleged victims from jail — often pressuring them into dropping charges.

TALLAHASSEE - Affordable housing programs could wind up being pitted against conservation projects in a budget fight at the Capitol, though interests groups from both sides insist there’s plenty of money to go around.

TALLAHASSEE - Florida’s largest teaching union, the Florida Education Association, thinks Gov. Rick Scott’s order suspending the standardized 11th grade English test this year falls too short to address the flood of tests faced by students and teachers.

With $2 million in state tax money in limbo after a state panel declined to approve a stadium-funding deal, state Sen. David Simmons, R-Altamonte Springs, told the Tiger Bay Club that the Legislature is likely to approve a plan, and Orlando City's soccer stadium sits pretty.

More political news

TALLAHASSEE — An appeals court Monday tossed out a constitutional challenge to a 2013 law that allows public officials to put their assets into blind trusts, pointing to the "speculative nature" of the case.

After years of neglect, Florida's "dysfunctional" mental-health system is likely to be a top priority for lawmakers in the upcoming legislative session, with both advocates and politicians calling for major reform.

PENSACOLA — A small, Alabama-based Indian tribe that wants to expand its casinos into the Sunshine State might adopt a hardball negotiating stance: Let us offer gambling in a few Florida locations, or we could consider growing and selling marijuana on our property.

Five people were stabbed early on Saturday in a restaurant in Washington, D.C., police said. The incident occurred around 12:30 a.m. at McFadden's, a popular restaurant and nightclub on Pennsylvania Avenue, eight blocks from the White House in the nation's capital.

A 19-year-old woman was arrested for the murder of her 5-year-old cousin in upstate New York on Friday, less than a day after she reported what police said was a concocted story about two men in ski masks kidnapping the boy, local media reported.